Lots of people pointing out this was likely automated and provided no proof of customer benefit, etc, all of which may be true in this instance. I do have a similar story that impressed me, however. Three years ago I was in the market for my first 3D printer and was looking for a specific model, but the manufacturer had a long delay for shipping. I tweeted asking if anyone knew where I could get one fast. A competitor quickly replied telling me they could ship me their printer within 48 hours. But that wasn't the end of it, they then proposed that they would print anything I wanted and take photos of it for me to show the quality, which I took them up on. Emailed them a file, and pretty quickly got emailed back photos of the print in progress, and then another email showing the final print close up so I could see how well it came out. Pulled out my credit card then and there.
This is how you hustle
21–30 of 76 posts
Re: This is how you hustle
#22Not a huge fan of this to be honest. From my perspective as a user, I don't want businesses I have no involvement with contacting me out of the blue. It's not quite spam, but I would treat it largely the same.
I'm also unsure that it's a good long term strategy for the business. It may generate some customers, but building a customer base on people who have A) shown themselves to be relatively fickle in choosing a host and B) have a tendency to use public channels to raise issues strikes me as a unstable base.
Re: This is how you hustle
#23Re: This is how you hustle
#24In my opinion, this is not hustling but ambulance chasing. Every tech company is going to have bad operational issue days. Going at your competitors customers regularly when your competitors have bad days will net you more negative reactions than positive, in my opinion.
It's also literally spam - unsolicited advertisement.
Is it unsolicited when you post your issue on a public medium for all the world to see? I consider any such public announcement a direct request for the target's response and an indirect request for the public's response.
Re: This is how you hustle
#25Interesting that the user that submitted this article is a spammer buying votes. Have comment karma farmers found their way to HN?
Re: This is how you hustle
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is not spam by the US definition. It is by some European countries, though.
What is spam by the US definition?
I agree with this site about it: https://www.spamhaus.org/consumer/definition/
The key here would be unsolicited (yes) and bulk (possibly no). It is impossible to tell based on the blog post, but I find it less likely that there was a bot designed to find customers after a rival outage than a human doing it. If there was a bot however, that would be spam.
I think many people on here would agree that it is annoying and would probably be ignored or marked as spam, but I don't think it is spam.
It is definitely spam in other countries, though, where the criteria is unsolicited.
Re: This is how you hustle
#27> I sent them a Tweet to ask them to please resolve the issue. Before they even responded to me, I suddenly had this email in my inbox
How did the Company that was trolling their Competitors' twitter account have access to this guy's email address?
Re: This is how you hustle
#28All this post shows is that some people are easily impressed. Nothing original or praise worthy to see here.
Re: This is how you hustle
#29Not a huge fan of this to be honest. From my perspective as a user, I don't want businesses I have no involvement with contacting me out of the blue. It's not quite spam, but I would treat it largely the same. I'm also unsure that it's a good long term strategy for the business. It may generate some customers, but building a customer base on people who have A) shown themselves to be relatively fickle in choosing a ho…
> I don't want businesses I have no involvement with contacting me out of the blue. It's not quite spam...
Unsolicited email from parties you have no involvement with is spam by definition.
And note to spammers and marketers on HN, I know I'm abusing my spam filters, but if I see emails from parties I don't recognize because "I subscribed for updates to one of their partners" (or some other bullshit explanation like that), I instantly flag them as spam, even if they have an unsubscribe button, because I can't unsubscribe from something I never subscribed to and I refuse to validate my email address like that.
Re: This is how you hustle
#30I feel the OP likely may have been duped by an automated message that was setup to send during status issues or Tweets to a company's customer support representatives. I've sent some Tweets to customer support before (threatening to leave) that were "loved" by a competitor within seconds.
Nope, I ended up exchanging a few emails with the guy about this strategy - it was not a bot. I removed identifying info to shorten the emails but it was quite obviously not a mass email.